Fracking: Environmental volunteers got it right

Protesters rally outside the Westin Nova Scotian hotel on March 31 as Energy Minister Andrew Younger speaks inside at a breakfast hosted by the Maritimes Energy Association. The protesters were calling for a fracking ban and a rejection of the proposed Energy East pipeline. (RYAN TAPLIN / Staff)

I, like many Nova Scotians, had reason to celebrate earlier this month. We can take a collective sigh of relief, knowing that hydraulic fracturing will not take place in our beautiful province any time soon. Our government, having listened to its citizens, banned this foolish practice for the time being.

Some people I know had themselves small parties, filled with back-patting and congratulations. I preferred the comfort of my own home, lying on my couch, enjoying a cold, clear glass of water from the tap, clean and unfracked.

Others reacted differently to our win over fracking. One Sept. 9 piece in The Chronicle Herald was particularly entertaining, titled Fracking: where industry, government went wrong, written by Steve Parker. In it, he explained how the downfall of fracking was the result of emotional environmentalists bullying corporate and political groups into the corner ... and not the result of a dangerous industry being fought off by a unified public.

I suppose you can call me an environmentalist, though I’m not as emotional as Mr. Parker suggests. I’m a practical person, a lover of science and I dare say, well-informed on this issue. That being said, my calm demeanour cracks when I hear people suggest that our opposition to fracking is emotional rather than scientific.

“They defeated the factual arguments of industry and science with organization and emotion, as well as anecdotes and opinions,” Mr. Parker wrote.

Here’s the science I fall back on. Forget the debate over water quality for a moment. Heck, I'll be nice — take away fracking causing earthquakes, air pollution, impacts on wildlife, health and our children. Put that all aside. Studies have suggested that fracking, due to the amount of methane leaked into the atmosphere from active and abandoned wells, may be a more aggressive contributor to climate change than coal — COAL. This possibility alone warrants a fracking ban.

Sorry if that was too emotional. I get away from myself sometimes.

Prof. Thomas Duck, a marvellously well informed atmospheric scientists with Dalhousie’s department of physics and atmospheric science, stood up at Halifax's public fracking meeting to speak about exactly this — the significant impact on climate change that fracking represents.

The debate surrounding fracking is too rarely informed by the voice of science, which is exactly what we emotional tree-huggers have been raving about. The much-needed studies required to determine the environmental impacts of fracking don’t exist, but don’t take my word for it. Hear this quote from Nova Scotia’s independent fracking review: “The data needed to reliably assess environmental impacts is not available.”

The Council of Canadian Academies arrived at the same conclusion, saying, “authoritative data about potential environmental impacts are neither sufficient nor conclusive,” and still, their review condemned fracking. Yes, we environmentalists are an emotional bunch, hopelessly passionate about what we stand for, but not without reason, I assure you ... and certainly not without science.

“The environmental extremists will not accept change,” Mr. Parker writes. Well, you have us there. We environmentalists are famously opposed to change.

There is perhaps no single community of people in this country more hungry for change than environmentalists. We want nothing less than to save the world, an ambitious and ideological goal perhaps, but one demanding change. Mr. Parker consistently refers to fracking as “progress” or “positive change,” a curious position to take on a technology that demonstrates how desperate industry is to extract fossil fuels. We’re after the same hydrocarbons as always, except we’ve resorted to brutish extraction methods to get it. Fracking isn’t change — it’s cliché.

“The clever, well-financed and organized efforts of environmental groups on fracking were very important in the decision to ban it,” Parker said, displaying a cleverness of his own. There is no better way to discredit a group than to mention how much money it has at its disposal.

I personally sat on one of these anti-fracking committees. Around the table were well-informed, hard-working and often sleep-deprived people, sharing their ideas in a cafe once a week, most of them volunteers, finding time between work and home just to attend our meetings. Speaking as one of those volunteers, I suggest Mr. Parker check his facts. If there was a pot of gold behind our work, even a $5 bill, I certainly didn’t see it. “Well financed,” indeed.

This is in sharp contrast to the industry standing to benefit from fracking, the one Steve Parker himself represents by sitting on the board of directors for Heritage Gas.

That our mostly unfinanced work was able to defeat fracking in Nova Scotia speaks to two things: first, the desire of the people to stop this nonsense, and second, the difference between pushing one’s agenda and taking a stand.

Zack Metcalfe is an author, journalist and volunteer with the Sierra Club Canada Foundation. He lives in Halifax.